Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: The FSF didn't redefine anyhting.

Author:William Crim
Posted:8/23/2000; 3:13:33 PM
Topic:Next survey: Are you an open source developer?
Msg #:20005 (In response to 19996)
Prev/Next:20004 / 20006

pro·pri·e·tar·y (pr-pr-tr) adj. Abbr. prop., pty.

1. Of or relating to a proprietor or to proprietors as a group: proprietary rights. 2. Exclusively owned; private: a proprietary hospital. 3. Befitting an owner: a proprietary air. 4. Owned by a private individual or corporation under a trademark or patent: a proprietary drug.

Also.

Proprietary articles, manufactured articles which some person or persons have exclusive right to make and sell. --U. S. Statutes.

I do not see where Stallman has redefined anything. You said, "Stallman calls any software which is licensed for money "proprietary," when in fact that word in common usage has a very different meaning." You are talking about two different things. "Sold for money" and "licensed for money" are different things. It can't be free(as in freedom) if you put a monetary restriction on the use of the code. If you use any Open Source license(including the GPL) you are agreeing that you WON'T charge for licensing, because by definition you are freely licensing the code to anyone. Proprietary code gives you NO basic right to the code, which is to say the owner of the code(the proprieter) is using copyright to excercise his right to prevent your use of the code until you pay.

Here is Stallman's definition, from the Gnu Website. The page that this comes from is http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html

Proprietary software

Proprietary software is software that is not free or semi-free. Its use, redistribution or modification is prohibited, or requires you to ask for permission, or is restricted so much that you effectively can't do it freely.

The Free Software Foundation follows the rule that we cannot install any proprietary program on our computers except temporarily for the specific purpose of writing a free replacement for that very program. Aside from that, we feel there is no possible excuse for installing a proprietary program.

For example, we felt justified in installing Unix on our computer in the 1980s, because we were using it to write a free replacement for Unix. Nowadays, since free operating systems are available, the excuse is no longer applicable; we have eliminated all our non-free operating systems, and any new computer we install must run a completely free operating system.

We don't insist that users of GNU, or contributors to GNU, have to live by this rule. It is a rule we made for ourselves. But we hope you will decide to follow it too. --

I'd prefer not to get into a debate in this forum on this topic, we are supposed to be talking about a survey. If you want to take this off board, or to another forum, email me at gog@gocougs.wsu.edu .

There are responses to this message:

This page was archived on 6/13/2001; 4:56:11 PM.

© Copyright 1998-2001 UserLand Software, Inc.